Blog Archives

Girl on the Edge

1/24/2022

Author: Ruth Carneson
Publisher: face2face
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Ruth Carneson is an artist. I was reminded of her work recently when she posted an image on facebook. This in turn reminded me of her book ‘Girl on the Edge’, first published in 2014 and which I read a while ago. Ruth is an established artist now, but her book tells of the long, bumpy ride she had to get there.
Briefly, but significantly, Ruth is the daughter of anti-apartheid activists Fred and

Sarah Carneson. Copy on the back of the book says ‘Ruth was four years old when her father was arrested for high treason and her world was turned upside down…(she) learned how to keep her mouth shut, to look out for microphones in the walls and to beware of friends who could betray her trust.’ This was in the mid 1950’s. Many young children had parents who were arrested, detailed, tortured or exiled then. Each would have had their own experience, but not all have written them, nor have a body of artwork that tells their story.
The four year olds fear of the Special Branch knocking on the door turned into a troubled, rebellious childhood and expulsion. At 14, teddy in hand, Ruth was flown alone to England ‘for her own safety’ to stay with her brother and sister, Lynn and Johnny. This is London in the swinging 60’s. Things don’t go well. Psychiatric hospitals and suicide attempts make an appearance – as does Samson, two sons, a caravan in Wales, Dartington Art College in Devon, protests, and a solo exhibition. Soon after Nelson Mandela is released, she makes the return pilgrimage and later takes up the role of artist-in-residence on Robben Island.
Ruth’s life has been a roller-coaster as she openly and disarmingly reveals in her book. In it are included a telling selection of photographs as well as letters she wrote to her father in prison between 1968 and 1971.
Throughout all this, art has been her companion and her means of expressing her fears and feelings, and her pictures, like her book, tell a layered back story of emotional and mental turmoil that reflect the complex psyche of South Africa. Good news is that the now smiling and gentle Ruth is still producing art – and in a much happier head space back home in Cape Town. It’s quite a story.

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Rediscover Your Self-Confidence

1/21/2022

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Author: Rolene Strauss
Publisher: Tafelberg
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
I found reading this book a good way to kick-start my New Year. I must admit at first I found the task of reading over 300 pages of a self-help book quite daunting but, as I read further, I got clarity. There’s no need to rush here. This is about you reawakening your true self, finding joy and fulfilment in a frenetic world. If you’re overwhelmed, anxious, riddled with self-doubts and guilt, Rolene Strauss’s

Rediscover Your Self-confidence, in one way or another, will help you rediscover your essence and become self-assured. I see her Seven Steps as essential building blocks to achieving success, whatever that maybe to you, and reaching your goals. I truly enjoyed the author’s way of writing, her personal story, her insights and the very practical advice she gives to the reader.
Upon reading her journey my eyes were wide open to the reality that we all suffer from low self-esteem at some point/s in our lives. Even those women we hold in high regard, like the author of this book who is a former Miss World, do grapple with insecurities. I guess that’s what makes us human after all. The tools and techniques she shares will go a long way in assisting you deal with uncertainties, and transform the negative mindset that’s ultimately detrimental to your well-being.
Rolene is a miracle baby, a test tube baby born in 1992 through a new in vitro technique. She grew up a happy child in the small-town of Volksrust in the corner of Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. Her father is a doctor and her mother took the role of being a homemaker even though she had graduated at the top of her class in nursing. Her brother Johann is 18 months younger than she. Her childhood was carefree with weekends spent climbing mountains and trees, and milking cows barefoot. She started modelling classes while still at primary school, even though a tomboy, she really enjoyed them. It was late in year 2000 when she met the then reigning Miss South Africa, Jo-Ann Strauss, that a dream was born. At age 15 she became self-conscious and ashamed of her body. She had reached 1.77 metres tall, was teased by other girls at school and rumours of her having an eating disorder did the rounds.
Modelling was still all fun and games to her when in 2006 she came 3rd in the Ford Model Look competition, and won the Elite Model Look South Africa. This win meant she was given a place at the international Elite Model Look 2008 finals in Prague. She ended up in the top 15 (out of 50 girls) in the world. So at the age of 16 she was awarded a contract with Elite Model Management. She was invited by Elite to go and work at their head office in Paris for three months. Before leaving she had to meet with a model agent in Pretoria to take measurements of her waist, hips and bust. This was the beginning of a change: no more confident, small-town girl. She was told for her to be an international model, some weight needed to come off her hips. “I never truly realised it then, but looking back on my career it was from that day on that I found myself constantly measured by the measuring tape called Perfect,” she says. Her time in Paris was disastrous. Her leg got infected and was painful. She was all alone in Germany for a modelling job when she had to undergo surgery. Back in Paris, her leg started swelling again and that’s when she realised the infection was back with a vengeance. She was emotionally drained and her confidence was in shreds. This was her first major emotional breakdown, at just 16 she found herself walking through the streets of Paris crying without realising it.
She would have a second one as Miss South Africa 2014 when she was alone in Johannesburg and felt so much public scrutiny and humiliation. “The third one should have been in that final year of my studies, but I knew I couldn’t afford to breakdown then. I had a baby. I had a husband. I had my studies. So, I never really allowed myself to feel,” she confesses.
In search of self-discovery, she took a break from medicine and went on a life changing journey that has led to an online educational platform with transformational online courses and, this book. The progress of rediscovering her self-confidence began when she started her masters’ degree in philosophy and management coaching at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. She’s now a successful transformational coach with a passion to empower women to be confident, in control of their own lives, and courageously chase their dreams. A graduated medical doctor, wife and mother of two boys.

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RUN For the Love of Life

1/16/2022

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Author: Erica Terblance
Publisher: Quickfox
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
I am both incredulous, and exhausted. I have just finished reading Erica Terblanches’s book RUN: For The Love of Life – and have been transported into another world, worlds actually. Other planes and places – way out of my comfort zone, deep in fact, into discomfort zones. Imagine, just imagine if you can, running 56kms across the salt flats of the Atacama Desert in Chile on Day four of six. Or

127kms along the Lycian Way in Turkey – Day one of six. Or 41 kms through the Kalahari, along what she calls Death Valley – Day two of seven. I could go on, but you get the picture. More astonishing still is that these cross-desert runs took place in 2009, 2015 and 2019 respectively, with many, plenty of others equally challenging, in between. Erica’s levels of endurance seem to know no bounds – her descriptions of tent-sharing sleeping, eating and competing in these events are breathtaking. They are also written with such immediacy and detail that you can all but smell the sweat and feel the grit – fresh from the pages of the journal she must surely have kept. Because Erica is also a writer. A writer who runs or a runner who writes? The question comes up in the book and certainly her style, of writing that is, is evocative, colourful and agonizing.
It’s not just the running that is agonizing, her own emotional life during these last twenty years or so (she is just 50 and only started running at 30) also suffers some extreme peaks and dips, and she very openly shares the passion and the pain that some of her partners have both given and caused her. Adding to the texture of the copy is her liberal sprinkling of quotes and poetry: ‘Only those who risk going too far find out how far they can go.’ TS Eliot; ‘As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler…what I found in simplicity was fullness’ Henry Thoreau; ‘I know you are tired but come, this is the way.’ Rumi. There are also lots illuminating, um, ‘footnotes’ on all things from nutrition and equipment to politics and philosophy for anyone who may even be contemplating following in her tracks.
You have to admire the commitment to putting across the full story of her running life, which is not just about running. Aside from her family and partners, Erica describes in detail the physical and mental approach, the strengths and weaknesses of several of her fellow athletes – some of them in their seventies (just in case you were feeling comfortable that at your advanced years you have moved beyond such madcap activity). But above all, the running journey has enabled her to look deeply into her own approach, strengths and weaknesses, and she is again, very open to sharing. ‘As I grow older’, she concludes ‘…I have found that in the moments when I shift my attention of worldly preoccupations…the greater the peace and the more my life seems to right itself.’ And as she grows older one of her other preoccupations is to encourage others to benefit from running – not hundreds of kms through unforgiving landscape – but Couch to 10kms in 10 weeks through her Thrive Run Club. You might like to check it out on facebook – or take a trot along the Sea Point promenade where you just might find her like a pied piper with a new and enthusiastic set of followers. Erica is an athlete in the extreme.

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69 Jerusalem Street

1/12/2022

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Author: Lindiwe Nkutha
Publisher: Modjaji books
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
An accountant by profession, Lindiwe Nkutha’s book is a vivid collection of eight short stories that will move you in a profound way. The stories are about the daily struggles of ordinary people living in an unjust world. She covers (amid other things) issues of patriarchy, sexuality, abuse, love, loss, marginalisation and faith. She’s unpretentious in her writing describing her characters and their circumstances in great detail. Her sharp, humorous writing style

and use of poetry makes the book that much more addictive.
Some of the stories that still linger in my mind long since reading the book:
Confessions of Karelina. A guilt ridden story about a woman caught between her Catholic faith and her unwonted desire and love for a woman.
69 Jerusalem Street. That’s the number of a house in Phomolong Township, where on one fateful Saturday in August, a mother found courage she never thought she had to fight back against her rapist - who was also her tormentor and husband; father to her child.
The Glasspecker. A sad account on loss and grief. A story about a young woman drowning her sorrows in liquor and cinnamon cigarettes – mourning her youth, the loss of her life and that of her lover. When all is lost, she makes the ultimate human sacrifice.
The Reader. An intriguing tale of spirituality and divination in this century. A company is in desperate need to have its aura cleansed after hitting financial difficulties. The Reader, needing plenty of cash fast, takes the job. As the week from hell comes to an end, The Reader exposes embezzlement of company funds and who the culprit is.
Black Widow. The author here not only tackle issues of love, betrayal, loneliness and death but, sensitive matters of transgender and gender reassignment.
Jocasta’s Hairballs. A heart wrenching story of violence and patriarchy that had me both furious and shattered from begin till the end. The story is about Jocasta, a woman who endures two miscarriages, a loveless marriage and, appalling abuse from her adulterous husband. There are many characters in this story but the least said about the misogynist Pastor Paul the better. I do not know who’s more vile him or the husband.
It’s always wonderful hearing African women’s voices coming to the forefront and Lindiwe Nkutha is a remarkable story teller. Her exhilarating stories in this book jump out of the pages and you can see them playing in your mind like a movie. She has a wealth of insight into the human psyche. I can’t wait to read more from her in the near future.

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Go Away Birds

1/10/2022

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Author: Michelle Edwards
Publisher: Modjaji
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
If Go-Away Birds were a recipe for a dish, the list of ingredients would be long. Created in the kitchens of trendy Cape Town, cool Misty Cliffs and alternative White River, in this dish is the social-media-intense world of foodie magazines; the competitive Cape Town restaurant industry; Taiwanese cuisine; allegations of slave labour; veganism; lowveld farming; mixed and mixed up relationships

and messy marriage; a mugging; wanted, unwanted, missed and nearly missing children; sibling closeness and distance; emotional poverty; lost and found selves and souls. And coping with family. And the residual hangover of politics. ‘I think everyone in South Africa needs counselling round the clock, quite honestly.’ Tshidi suggests, ‘We’ve all got some kind of PTSD, even when there’s nothing specific that’s happened to us, personally.’ There’s a lot going on here. There are also sustainability concerns and sonnets, and a writing group – with issues.
Dealing with all kinds of her own issues, those above and more, is protagonist Skye, Karoo-Skye or just ‘Roo’, who we first meet heading to her childhood home near Hazyview for a break from the strain. And as her taxi trickles up main road White River, ‘memories flood in, all tastes and textures’.
It feels like there are a lot of memories in here, the authors own, and those of others - not least the ‘single piercing kweeeeeeeeh’ and ‘mohawk of a go-away-bird in a palm tree’.

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Girl on the Edge

Rediscover Your Self-Confidence

RUN For the Love of Life

69 Jerusalem Street

Go Away Birds

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